High & Low: John Galliano

Come for the wild fantasy couture, stay for the tabloid drama of a blackout drunk alcoholic spouting racism and anti-Semitism. The doc is entertaining and well-made, I particularly like the framing and lighting of Galliano as a talking head (he remains a very handsome and charismatic man).

The doc doesn't take a strong editorial position but I don't believe that he has grown and changed since the public outbursts that got him fired (other than getting rehab). After working with a rabbi he still dressed up like a Hasidic man while in NYC, and said "now I know how the Jews feel" when his house was vandalized. Oh honey, no.

There was a local fashion networking event after the show, so the people watching was amazing. Lots of folks dressed to the nines, women in insane high heels

Grasshopper Republic

Fly on the wall doc about something with people collecting grasshoppers in Uganda. literally no context setting, not even the subjects talking about what they're planning. very slow, people faffing around with generators and breaking lightbulbs interspersed with close-up footage of insects.

Walkout. It was my last film of the night and my patience was gone after 45 mins. I will never know if they caught grasshoppers or why they wanted to

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

A furious powerpoint about Western powers' collusion in the overthrow of Patrice Lumumba's government of Congo. It's entirely an assemblage of period news footage, interviews, and pop culture - mostly jazz. There is too much to cover, which is why it was a solid two and a half hours. The shit the US did because of the cold war, the racism, the way of all things Khrushchev was telling the truth... now very sorry I couldn't schedule the Hammerskjold biopic since he was so central

Merchant/Ivory

What it says on the tin. I didn't realize they had been working together professionally since the mid-60s, but the real shocker was that Ivory is from Klamath Falls Oregon! Also their screenwriter (who I always thought was south asian) was actually a Holocaust refugee from Germany who met her Indian husband in England.
Now I feel like I should catch up on more of their films